The assembly of cigarettes by the consumer has been known in various forms for a long time. One of the simplest procedures in this regard involves placing a charge of tobacco on a cigarette paper and then rolling it into a rod and sealing it. This procedure requires a degree of manual skill and is time consuming. Simple roller devices comprising a pair of rollers and an endless belt have been employed to improve the assembly procedure.
One of the appeals of "roll-your-own" cigarettes to certain smokers is the lower cost of the resulting cigarette, since tobacco sold in loose form or some other inherently-unsmokeable form attracts a much lower excise tax than tobacco sold in the form of ready-to-smoke cigarettes in many jurisdictions, so that the cost to the smoker of the self-assembled cigarette is much lower than machine-assembled cigarettes.
One of the problems that the individual assembling the cigarette encounters is obtaining a consistency in the quantity of the tobacco charge employed and hence obtaining a consistency in smoking quality.
Several suggestions have been made in the prior art to mechanize the operation of cigarette formation. One such prior art suggestion appears in U.S. Pat. No. 3,822,710 to Percy W. Bramhill. In the Bramhill structure, a preformed cigarette tube, usually having a filter attached thereto, receives a charge of tobacco from a tobacco cartridge comprising a rod of compressed tobacco enclosed in a thin, low friction, non-consumable material which is not smoked by the smoker.
Specifically it is indicated in the patent that the material of the sheath should be heat sealable or gluable and that coated cellulose film sold under the trademark "Cellophane" by DuPont is preferred.
The length of tobacco in the cartridges is slightly greater than the length of the empty portion of the cigarette tube and the external diameter of the cartridge is slightly less than the internal diameter of the paper tube, to permit the tobacco cartridge to be inserted into the paper tube to fill the tube and project slightly beyond the end of the tube. The outer sheath of the tobacco cartridge is removed prior to making the cigarette.
With the Bramhill machine, the cartridge is inserted by hand as far as it will go into the paper tube and the combination is positioned in a trough with the tobacco resting against a stop. The cigarette is pushed forward against the stop which causes the sheath to move forwardly over the stop while the tobacco is compressed until the stop is aligned with the end of the paper tube.
A slider is pushed along a rod which has the stop at its end until it abuts the stop from the other side from the tobacco. Two spring fingers on the slider then are used to squeeze the exposed end of sheath into a groove on the slider, so as to grip the sheath therebetween.
The slider then is withdrawn, so that the sheath is pulled out of the cigarette tube. The tobacco is prevented from movement by the stop and remains in the tube. As the sheath is being removed in this way, the tobacco expands to fill the paper tube snugly, as in the factory-made cigarette. When the sheath has been completely removed, the sheath usually is discarded and the cigarette is ready to be smoked.
This prior art procedure and equipment, therefore, requires that the cigarette cartridge be sized to be longer than the paper tube and be completely filled with tobacco. With this arrangement, it is necessary to compress the additional length of tobacco in the cartridge in order to provide a length of sheath which can be gripped so as to enable the sheath to be withdrawn. Compressing of the tobacco causes an uneven hardness of cigarette to result and tobacco to be lost from the end of the cigarette as it expands after the sheath has been removed.